McCoy tackling teen problems

June 30, 2007|BOB WIENEKE Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- There had been no thoughts provoking a life change. No mid-life crisis. No long looks in the mirror each morning. The epiphany actually came out of the blue, and it arrived when Molly McCoy, the oldest of former Notre Dame standout Mike McCoy's four children, came home from junior high one day a couple of decades ago and told him what kinds of things were going on at her school. Molly was telling her dad that high school sophomores were hitting on seventh-grade girls. She told him about the types of things that were going on at parties, and they weren't the types of things you'd expect to be going on with junior high students. She told him things that were jarring to him. "So it was just very perplexing to me that this was going on," McCoy said Thursday from Notre Dame, where he is serving as an honorary coach at the fifth annual Notre Dame Football Fantasy Camp. "So I just said, what can I do about it." He got involved, that's what he did. McCoy left the investment business and now works for a nonprofit organization called Bill Glass Champions For Life. McCoy is executive director of Champions For Today, which involves speaking at school assemblies. But it's more than just speaking. It involves early intervention/prevention programs that the local community can implement after the speakers leave. The goal? McCoy knows he can't touch every life. He estimates that 10 percent of those he speaks to are going to do things right and another 10 percent are never going to do things right. But it's those in the other 80 percent -- that vast area between the 10-yard lines if you want to put it in football terms -- that are vulnerable. "They're sitting on that fence," he says. "Which way do they go?" Champions For Today can help steer them in the right direction. At the end of the assemblies (McCoy estimates the group has spoken to 100,000 Michiana youngsters over the last decade) students are asked to fill out an index card. A few years ago, a seventh-grade girl in Buffalo wrote that she smoked and drank every weekend and four times had tried to commit suicide. "This wasn't an inner-city school. This was a fairly wealthy area," McCoy said. McCoy took the card to the principal and said something had to be done. The principal said it was a good girl. The parents had no clue. But because of Champions For Today, the family went into counseling and the mother quit her job to devote more time to family. "They're doing very well now," McCoy said. McCoy knows there may be experts who know more about what pre-teens are going through, but the former athlete label carries significance. "That's our marketing. That's our shtick," McCoy says. "So we're viewed just in a little different way than maybe an expert who maybe knows more than we do coming into a school. But because we played in the NFL, that perks them up a little bit." This week, McCoy has had the attention of a different set of pupils. As ND defensive line coach Jappy Oliver put campers through drills, McCoy would occasionally jump in and offer a tip. More than one of those players grew up idolizing McCoy. "I had a few say that," McCoy said. "I say, 'You must be pretty old if you remember me.'" Years after he played at Notre Dame and years after he decided to help others, McCoy remembers the conversation he had with his daughter and the problems that were creeping into the schools. "I think you get to that point in time in your life where you say, 'What can you do about it?'" he said. "And I did." Staff writer Bob Wieneke: bwieneke@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6428